On our Friday am TV spot... The studio told me "only one person," so I couldn't get half the club in like I wanted to - drat it all! I offered the spot to a couple of others, and they all grinned and politely said something like, "No, thank you, we'd rather sleep in!" Yeah, right, like they think *I'm* a morning person? Puh-leeze! ;-) After some thought I decided to take 4 ferrets: Litje, silver badger mitt male; Gaoth, the wee sable sprite (1.2 lbs dripping wet); Siobhan, albino sprite; and Dusty, the "One-eyed Flying WonderFert," honeyed sable male, who is available for adoption (borrowed from Lea for the occasion). I took our son JT with us, to help with the critters behind the scenes. Turns out 4 ferrets was exactly the right number, as there were 3 anchors and myself on the set - one for everybody to hold. Got to the station at 6:00 am (Groan! had to get up at 4:30 to do it!) and was able to actually sit IN the studio while they were working - gave the ferrets a chance to sniff around and get a little bored with the smells, so they were a *trifle* calmer when it was our turn. They got lots of airtime! When a segment faded out to the commercials, often they would turn the camera behind the set and use a shot of JT and the ferrets as the "fade-out." Dennis the cameraman even took a mobile camera and set it on the floor, so that the ferrets could investigate - gave the viewing audience a real UP CLOSE view of fuzzy noses all trying to climb into the camera lens! He really liked Dusty and let him climb all over the camera and poke his nose into every nook and cranny that he could find. He was also very gentle in removing Dusty's teeth from the cords... Anne Semmer's response was "Siobhan! ohhh, my best friend is named Siobhan! I sure hope she's watching this morning! (chuckle!)" and "This Siobhan is better behaved than my friend is!" Then, the anchors kept asking to "borrow" the ferrets "just to hold" while they did other segments.... The weatherman wound up with all four of them around his feet at once during his last segment (and I held my breath because Siobhan almost went up his pant leg!) We've had a really good response from the spot; people have called wanting to adopt Dusty, or find out more about the Frolic and the Club. Our Frolic went very well on Saturday - we had the expected laughs when ferrets didn't want to escape the paper sack, or decided to camp out in the tubes during the races instead of dashing out the other end. The winner of our "longest kisser" went over 1 1/2 minutes without stopping! A number of folks took advantage of our "grooming booth" to learn how to clip nails or clean ears safely. We had plenty of handouts on ferret care (I was afraid we'd run out early...) and handed out a good number of them. Three wonderful veterinarians volunteered their afternoon to be there to answer questions and monitor the ferrets. I think they had as much fun as the rest of us! And, the store manager wants to know when they can host our next event! (He's threatened to "take out the competition (for host site) with a bulldozer at midnight!" ROFL!) Channel 7 even sent out a camera man and put our frolic on the evening news. Lots of good exposure for the ferrets - people could see them being playful and social, and we got to emphasize that these are NOT wild animals! Everyone's ferrets crashed big time afterwards, even sleeping through most of Sunday.... Hey, PR and looking cute for the camera is hard work! While there were a few small problems (and we'll hash these out at our next meeting this coming weekend) I was extremely pleased at how well the event went, considering it was our very first Frolic and none of us had ever done anything like this before. We've got a really great group of folks in our Club, and I appreciate all the hard work and help they gave to make this turn out so well! Here's a public "Thank You!" to all of them. I'm proud to work with these folks! Carla S. WhyNot? Ferrets Rio Grande Domestic Ferret Club [Posted in FML issue 1752]